Goblin Slayer - Volume 12 - Chapter Pr

Prologue - Of Starting A Campaign

We did it! Illusion, Life, and Death cried, throwing their hands in the air.

Upon the table of the stars of the Four-Cornered World, a vast diagram lay unfurled.

The three great deities smiled to see it, nodding at one another in satisfaction.

Illusion, of course, but also Life and Death, were generous and merciful gods—they gave all things in this world as gifts, and finally, welcomed them all back again.

When these three grew excited, how could the other gods not take an interest?

Truth and Abundance were quick to appear, eager to know what was going on.

But a flustered Illusion promptly exclaimed, Don’t look! reaching to cover the diagram as Life and Death stood between it and the newcomers.

What’s this? A new adventure scenario?

No, it’s a campaign.

A campaign! That word got the gods talking.

A campaign! A tale of heroism! A story of battle!

Even a single adventure was such fun, a series of them connected to one another would clearly be even more so.

That was why the gods loved campaigns.

They would start with one or two, but some gods kept adding and adding, until they had seven or eight campaigns running at once.

And yet, even so, they couldn’t sit idly by at the proposal of a new saga.

They forgot whatever they had been about to do, raising their hands and saying they wanted to be a part of it.

Life and Death watched all this with a mixture of pleasure and concern.

It would, of course, be lonely if no one wanted to be part of your session.

The excited gods were enough to convince them that it had been worth it to ask Illusion for her help designing the scenario.

Illusion shouted angrily, bringing some order to the scene, then she picked the gods who had the most time in their schedules at the moment.

Life and Death chuckled happily to themselves as they watched this unfold.

They were, after all, both very busy gods, and had few opportunities to play like this.

But of course, gods alone did not an adventure make.

Now they needed adventurers to decide to take on the adventure of their own free will.

They had an idea—what a fine thing, ideas!—of which adventurers would suit which monsters.

They would start with the invitations—giving “handouts,” revelations, here and there that would intimate the destiny of adventure to each person.

Whether that person reached forward or drew back was up to them. An adventure had no meaning if the adventurer was dragged into it.

But the gods had faith that these people, being adventurers, would take on the adventures.

And the gods had faith that the monsters, being monsters, would stand in their way.

Nobody involved would offer silly excuses or find a pretext to run away.

All that remained, then, was to say a prayer and roll the dice.

Even the gods didn’t know how this adventure would turn out.

Everything would be determined by each adventurer’s karma—and the dice of Fate and Chance.